CWCpack Initiative – Half-Life

for Half-Life

A singleplayer mappack – a whole episode, but almost every map is made by a different mapper (beginners and experienced) without knowing the other maps, with only given entrance and exit areas, so that all the maps could be joined in one big episode.

34 Comments

Hi, stuck again. Im at the part after you kill the xen soldiers in the office area then run into the three guards. Ive gone down the next hallway activated the two buttons,
I hear something like an elevator or a door but nothing? Is this the end or did I miss something? Ive gone back and tried every door and elevator but nothing opens!
Thanks
IDM

andyb
I belive it is map #2. Its the same map that has the basement with the developers pictures in it.
I retraced my steps to a hall with a transport (light, beam) in it. When I step into it, it puts me in mid air on the cliffs?

Im stuck on map2 where you climb back up the ladder and have 2 grunts to kill and there does not seem to be a way out of the little hallway only a flashlight and a dark square where the light points to tried everything?

now I see what you mean, could be a bug 😐 the readme says there’s a problem with map 2 changing to map 3, but nothing about going back from map 2 to map 2a2. I’ve already loaded another save and nothing happens.
darn, I’m stuck, too!

If you have trouble going from map 2a2 to map 3 because map 3 won’t load, I’ve found the following worked for me:

1. Save where the map should load, at the dead end beneath the tall ladder.
2. Manually load map 3 by typing “map map3″ in the console. You’ll lose your inventory temporarily but that’s okay.
3. Immediately turn to the left and take the first passage on your left, to get back to map 2a2.
4. Map 2a2 will load. Turn around and map 3 will load.
5. Load your saved game. Now that map 3 has loaded once, it should load automatically.

Either it’s too buggy or I’m too stupid, but there were many places in this map pack where I was completely stuck. It seemed like doors that were supposed to open didn’t, preventing further progress. I noclipped so I could search around for any buttons or things I might have missed, but didn’t find any: it seems like the acknowledged bug in the map 2->map 3 transition is present in other level transitions too. It’s a shame because between the bugs it’s good fun.

The beauty of collaborations is the fact that you get to see and experience so many different styles in one place.
All seventeen maps by eight authors are very different yet very satisfying to play through.

These aren’t your average map packs either, as most of them are very elaborate with a smart layout of connecting corridors and new areas with barely any backtracking; thereby eliciting a sense of progression and succession. Some authors like to throw in some puzzles, others like to rely on plain ol” good mapping and firefights and others will bait you embarrassingly, Half-Quake-style.

Minor quibbles include things like missing a critical jump/platform or such, but I didn’t encounter any map change problems (of which some are awesome, by the way).

Whatever the method of design, it all works together very well to bring you a synergistic map pack.

But, I am back able to noclip. CWC didn’t like cheating I suppose: normaly I start the game with this shortcut:
hl.exe -dev -console -game cwc
and normaly (in other mods) this works fine for the cheating… but not in CWC. I had to bring down the console, give in: sv_cheats 1 and enter.
After this I had (in other mods) to type in noclip, but in this mod I have to type in /noclip
But: this system works ( enfin, from time to time)

So I know there is a door behind crates, I could crash one crate (not the others) and then the door wouldn’t stil open. With noclip I went through the door.

There’s another button, at the terminal, not a light but the kind of button you push. It’s hard to see because the portal periodically obscures it.

You’re supposed to come through the door the other way later, although you won’t need to if you already found the security card. To do justice to the authors of the mod, it is possible to play without cheating.

Great mappack with everything needed to satisfy (almost) any kind of players.
That means: there is action, there are puzzles and there’s great design – not everywhere but mostly. If only there would be a theme, like a story which all mappers (8 in total!) would have combined with their maps.
It’s hard to describe it the whole mod in words as it’s so different due to so much variety and different tasks.

Con’s:
-Many bugs like triggering scripts, mapchange, graphics, clipping etc.
-No story
-Can be confusing, frustrating as you “never” know what to do next, no hints
-Some tougher puzzles can be too hard
-Some mean enemy placement (or large amount of enemies, but there’s more than enough ammo)
-Some design oddities like semi-hidden keycard for example

OK. this is the first map/mappack/mod I have played using the personalizer and I can’t say it is the best I have ever played, it is too much of a hotch potch of styles, which as a whole does not work for me!

According to the ” readme! It is from 2002, so if I had played it then, I might have found it more interesting, but 10 years later it is not as much fun as it once might have been! Some of the maps were fun to play, but one really sticks out like a sore B*%%0ck on a bulldog. You go back into an area that was clear and are confronted with a stupid number of Houndeyes, a similar thing happened with Vortigaunt’s (maybe the same map).

Each map on it’s own probably had some merits worth playing but as a whole as I’ve said it didn’t work for me.

Maybe I am viewing this with expectations from a viewpoint, that realises the original mappers won’t benefit from the feedback any of us give a decade on!

The CWC Mappack Initiative is a collaborative level pack by a group of regulars at the Polish Half-Life mapping site called Centrum WorldCraft. In that sense, it is in a similar vein to Project: Quantum Leap so some comparisons are inevitable. The CWC pack is more coherent as a level pack, and the levels feature a more consistent theme than the PQL ones. Furthermore, the CWC pack is more consistent in the sense that it doesn’t quite plumb the depths of some of the weaker PQL maps, but on the other hand it never reaches the high points that a couple of the PQL maps did either.

The opening of this episode picks up right where the original Half-Life left you, in the tram car talking with the G-Man. From there the maps pretty much keep to the Black Mesa and Xen locales, and they flow together pretty nicely even though there is a large number of mappers involved (17 maps by 8 different authors). One thing that is lacking, however, is a general objective or overall mission. I can’t speak much better of PQL, although the CWC pack features no “mini-mission” maps like PQL did, where there was a self-contained story or mission contained within a single map. So in general you just plug through the maps solving the puzzles and fighting the enemies; the end when it comes is a little sudden and a little disappointing, but it seems to promise a CWC Mappack 2, if my Polish is still sharp.

Ok, trouble again installing. I only have HL Source installed on Steam. Here are install instructions:
Start Half life, choose custom game ,select the CWC mappack and activate it , then back to main menu and select new game
I first put the folder into myusername/Steamapps/half-life source/
Restarted Steam, and it is not showing in the games. I tried starting HL and there was no choice “choose custom game.” Then I moved the folder to pathname above/hl1. Still no game showing. How to install on Steam?
Thanks!
Carolyn